Who are the Parents Anyway?

You see it all the time at the mall or the grocery store. It happens at home and in public. It happens on nights and weekends. It is a 24/7 phenomenon and it is all about Darwinism. The weak perish and the strong survive. The most significant problem is that I am talking about the parent child relationship and all the power being on the wrong side of the scale.

There is very little in life that is more disastrous than when a child has more power than a parent and the parents are unwilling or unable to change the dynamic. Parents must be parents and they cannot be their child’s friend. Kids have friends their own age for that. Parents must be parents. Even when it is hard.

Children thrive when limits are set. As much as kids will naturally push limits they will also thrive with limit setting. When parents have an inability to set limits and live by those limits, it is under those circumstances that parents lose control of their kids. There are bad children out there who are bad independently of their parents but for the most part “bad” kids are created by bad parenting.

As kids get older and the dynamics between them become more rooted it becomes even harder for the parents to change the flow of power. Now fast forward to a teen or adolescent or young adult who has a drug and behavioral problem. Imagine how impossible it is for a parent to step in and have any impact on changing their child’s behavior or getting them to even participate in a treatment program. More often than not if the child actually enters a program it is incredibly important that a large part of that program is spent on changing the parent/child relationship. Parents have to relearn how to be parents and kids have to relearn how to be kids.